The
blockchain is a distributed network that records digital transactions
on a
publicly accessible ledger.This
paper exploreswhether blockchain
technology is a suitable platform for the preservation of digital
signatures
and public/private key pairs. Conventional infrastructures use digital
certificates, issued by certification authorities, to declare the
authentication of key pairs and digital signatures. This paper suggests
that
the blockchain’s hash functions offer a better strategy for
signature
preservation than digital certificates. Compared to digital
certificates,
hashing provides better privacy and security. It is a form of
authentication
that does not require trust in a third-party authority, and the
distributed
nature of the blockchain network removes the problem of a single point
of
failure. This article is an appendix to the research paper Blockchain Technology for Recordkeeping (Lemieux,
2016).

Introduction

The
blockchain has been with us since 2009. In its seven years of
existence, it has
successfully resisted attempts to hack into it, take it down or co-opt
it. While
the technology is at a crossroads in its development, there are many
use cases for
its adoption across industry, including the field of records management.

The
notarization
of electronic records presents novel challenges for records managers.
In a
paper records environment, the creator of a record states ownership of
the
document, or assents to an agreement articulated in the document, by
signing or
countersigning it. From the records manager’s perspective,
the document is the
property of the party that signed it. The signature is synonymous with
the
document.

In
a digital records environment, we now have the “digital
signature.” The preservation of digital signatures is central
to the concerns
of the archivist. In this paper, I discuss the process of creating
digital
signatures. I review the advantages and limitations of public key
infrastructures (PKIs), the established repository for the storage of
the
signatures. I compare PKIs with the architecture around the
blockchain’s
handling of the signatures. I conclude that the blockchain is a sounder
platform for the preservation of digital signatures than the PKIs.

Defining “electronic”
versus “digital”

Signatures
generated on the blockchain are correctly referred to as
“digital” rather than
“electronic”. Electronic signatures are an
“electronic sound,
symbol, or process attached to, or logically associated with, a
contract or
other record and…adopted by a person with the intent to sign
the record”
(Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act,
§§ 106(b,5), 2000).
In
other words, it can be a scan of a handwritten signature or an image
digitally
“written” onto a screen that fulfils the same
function as a handwritten
signature. Digital signatures are a particular type of electronic
signature
that encrypt the signed document and help to authenticate its identity
on
subsequent occasions (Power, 2013). They are created in the digital
environment
to provide a layer of validation and transmission for public key
encryption
databases (Katz, 2010).

At
the level of records, this digital-only approach is informed by the new
Canadian
General Standards Board (CGSB) standard on electronic records as
documentary
evidence. The standard distinguishes digital records from electronic
records. Electronic
records refer to any machine-readable record, whether it was created
digitally
or through analogue means. Digital records are those electronic records
that
consist of “discrete binary values aggregated into one or
more bit stream”
(CGSB 72.34-2015, 0.1).

It
is
through questions concerning the preservation of digital signatures
that the
blockchain enters the discussion. To understand the role of blockchain
technology in the notarization of electronic records, it is instructive
to
examine the academic discourse on digital signatures and their
preservation
prior to the advent of the blockchain.

What are the
characteristics of digital signatures?

Digital
signatures are designed to guard against tampering and forgery in
digital
communications (Rouse, 2014).

There
is agreement among records managers that authentication is the prime
purpose of
digital signatures (Boudrez, 2007, p. 180); Blanchette, 2006, p. 70
& 2012,
p. 1). Methods and systems for the verification and authentication of
electronic records are a topic of ongoing discussion.

·They
provide authenticity for a document
during its transfer from one digital
space to another (Blanchette, 2012, p. 5).

·Unlike
written signatures, digital
signatures do not prove the identity of the signatory. They provide
authentication of the document’s bitstream,
in that the sender has encrypted it with his public key and
the receiver
decrypts it with his private key (Boudrez, 2007, p. 183).

·They
are non-repudiable. They not only
preserve the integrity of the
document but, state that the two contracting parties were the only
counterparties and that only they could have produced their respective
signatures (Blanchette, 2006, p. 72; CGI, 2004, p. 11; Buldas et al.,
p. 4).

·The
cryptographic signatures
mitigate any attempts to alter the integrity
of a document after it has been signed (Blanchette, 2006, p. 73;
Boudrez, 2007,
p. 180; Lemieux, 2016).

How do digital signatures
work?

To
create a digital signature, counterparties sign the document directly.
This
structure differs from that of the blockchain, where the counterparties
sign a
hash that represents the document.

This
paper will refer to asymmetric or “public key”
cryptography, which involves an
interaction between public and private keys. The public key is stored
on a
server accessible to other users on the network, while the private key
remains
a secret.

Public
key cryptography operates under a dual procedure of which signatures
form a
part. Assuming there are two parties, each party possesses a key pair:
the
public and private keys. Figure 1 shows the following process: Alice
and Bob
are fellow archivists about to manage the transmission of a document.
Alice is
about to send a document to Bob across the network. Before she does so,
Alice
encrypts the document with Bob’s public key. Alice sends it
across,and Bob
decrypts the file with his private
key.

Fig.1
Public key encryption of a document

For
the signature (Figure 2), the roles are reversed: Alice encrypts that
samedocument with her private key
and then
sends it to Bob. Bob decrypts it with both his private key and
Alice’s public
key. If he decrypts it successfully, Bob can then verify that Alice was
the
sender. The document, standing as a new file, should state that it has
been
verified. The resulting digital signature is intended to be available
for
anyone to verify the identity of the party that signed the document (in
this
case, Alice). The signature will be available not only to Bob, but to
subsequent third parties as well. From the point-of-view of the
archivist, the
signature is genuine in that it is
what it claims to be, and it is authentic
in that the elements that are required for that authenticity are
present
(Duranti, 1989, p. 17).

Fig.2
Public key encryption for the signature of a document

Hashing

Should
Alice wish to speed up the process, she could create a cryptographic
hash of
the document and digitally sign the outputted hash value. In contrast
to
digital signatures, hashing is a form of document authentication in
which
documents are not signed directly. Instead, a hash function generates a
hash
value to confirm that the authentication of the digital signatures has
taken
place. There are two components to hashing:

·The
hash function is a hexadecimal
algorithm, such as SHA-256, that
maps an input data of any size into a uniform, usually compressed, file
size.
In digital preservation, hash functions confirm that no changes have
been made to
a digital document (Van Garderen, 2016a).

·The
hash value is the output of a
specific length that permanently
identifies the input data (Pedro, 2015, p.95).

The
hash function is a one-way process. This means that the user can create
the
hash from input data, but not use the hash to reveal the data. Should a
records
manager alter even onebit
from the
input data and then try to apply the same hash function, the manager
will
generate a completely different hash value (Pedro, 2015, p. 97).

Applying
these principles to the previous scenario, Alice authenticates the
document not
by signing it but by generating the hash value. The hash value is then
broadcast to the network to confirm that the transfer of the document
has taken
place. Hash values have the following advantages:

·They
can confirm the creation of
content bundles such as datasets, degree certificates and ID management.

·They
can authenticate that same
document in the future, as long as it has not been altered (Lemieux,
2016).

·The
hash is a smaller file size
than the input data and so can be stored more easily (Pedro, 2015, p.
99).

Public key infrastructures
(PKIs)

PKIs
can come in the form of key management servers or centralized
directories. They store key pairs, digital signatures, digital
certificates and
hash values. According to the CGI’s 2004 white paper on
public key encryption
(p. 10-11), they combine software with a management process that covers
the
following operations:

·The
creation of the key pair –
Pedro (2015, p. 53) used the
analogy of keys unlocking a safe. The private key unlocks the safe
while the
public key locks the safe. To decrypt Alice’s document, Bob
creates a
private-public key pair by running a key generation algorithm from the
PKI.

·The creation
of digital certificates –
certificates verify the digital
signature by displaying the link between Alice and her public key. In
those
systems that issue certificates, the signature is known as a
“qualified digital
signature”. They produce the validity period, the signature
algorithm, a serial
number and the name of the certification authority (Boudrez, 2007).
These
validity periods can be of a long duration and they also rely on the
sustained
readability and integrity of the signatures (Gladney, 2007, p. 170).

·Private
key protection
– in key pairings, the encrypted private key is
mathematically linked to the public key, which is unencrypted (Pedro,
2015, p.
53). Despite this link, it is computationally infeasible to deduce the
value of
the private key from the value of the public key (Gladney, 2007, p.
168).

·Certificate
revocation in the event of a compromised private key
–
once a user’s certificate has been revoked, the PKI must
preserve the
certificate on a database accessible to all users in the network so
that it
cannot be re-used. This addresses a problem identified by Kohnfelder
(1978, p.
16): a public file encryption function has a single point of failure.
Once
breached, the attacker can pass encryption functions that are bogus.
Kohnfelder
also stated that updating such a large system would be expensive and
inefficient.

·Private
key backup and recovery
– if the user loses his private
key, any files encrypted with that key will be lost. The PKI needs a
backup and
recovery mechanism for lost private keys.

·Key
and certificate update –
this is a mechanism for the
renewal of expiring digital certificates. The PKI achieves this by
carrying out
the renewal automatically or notifying the user to carry out an
operation that
updates the certificate himself. Blanchette (2012, p. 77) stated that
the idea
behind fixed expiry dates is to mitigate against incremental damage to
the network’s
integrity due to corrupted public keys.

·Key
history management –
following a key update that
generates new key pairs, history management makes it easier for the
user to
determine which private key to use for decrypting files.

Trusted
third parties (TTPs) have been defined as a “secure middle
layer on (cloud)
service transactions” (Stamou et al., 2013, p. 4976). They
allow the secure,
trustful, interaction between two parties (ibid., p. 4979). TTPs can be
public
sector organizations, such as the NSA and GCHQ, or they can originate
from the
private sector, e.g. GlobalSign, Symantec and Comodo.

Certification
Authorities (CAs) are a type of TTP that deliver validation authority
for a PKI
(Black & Layton, p. 13, 2014). PKIs assume the presence of CAs.
Users of
the network store their public key with the CA, which they recognise as
a
trusted third party that can vouchsafe the public key on its server.
CAs verify
the identity of each user and sign their public keys.In Alice and Bob’s exchange of signatures,
Alice is presenting her CA certificate, with the signature and public
key both
embedded, to Bob (Pedro, 2014, p. 55).

Caveats with digital
signatures on PKIs

TTPs as a central point of
failure

Users
store their signatures with a TTP because they trust the integrity of
the
organization, but TPPs operate under minimal legal enforcement.
Further,
because most TPPs are centralized, they stand as a “central
point of failure”
(Allen et al., 2015, p. 2). The risks of storing signatures on a
centralized
platform owned by an organization include:

·TPPs
are not bound to conform with
national or international legislation (Stamou et al., 2012, p. 4981).

·TPPs
are not obliged to enforce
their own security policies (ibid.)

·It
is difficult to control the
internal governance of a TTP and to compel them to offer external ports
in
their systems or to submit accurate logs on a user’s request
(ibid.)

Digital signatures validate and
sign the bitstream of a document, not the document itself (OCLC/RLG
Working
Group, 2002; Boudrez, 2007, p. 183)

As
an
example, a fonds contains a video
of
an event in the ‘wmv’ format but the archivist
converts it to an ‘mp4’ so that
it will be viewable across a wider range of platforms. The signature
verifies
the bitstream of the ‘wmv’. However, should the
archivist believe that the content
of the video had been digitally
signed and attempt to authenticate the ‘mp4’ with
the same signature that had
come with the ‘wmv’ file, the authentication will
fail.

Verification is not
protection

The
digital signature does not prove the integrity of the digital record.
It only
proves whether the digital document had been altered post-verification;
it does
not prevent the alteration from taking place. This is why encryption is
required when using digital signatures. Also, it only verifies a
document at
the point of transfer and not at any time thereafter (Boudrez, 2007, p.
183,
citing National Archives Australia).

New signatures required
for file conversions

With
each data migration or file format conversion, a digital archivist will
need to
generate a new set of signatures to authenticate the digital transfer.
The
dilemma this creates for the archivist is whether to preserve only the
originating signature set or to archive them as a validation chain in a
parallel repository that can capture future signatures generated over
time
(Boudrez, 2007, p. 186-7). And, should the archivist decide to archive
them,
would he build it internally or would he migrate them to an external
server? If
he enacts the former solution, he will create an extra layer of digital
archiving but would maintain control over the signatures. If he enacts
the
latter, he can upload them to a PKI solution but lose direct control.

How does the blockchain
preserve documents?

Peter
Van Garderen, the developer of the Archivematica and AtoM digital
archiving
systems, defines the blockchain as “an immutable chain of
data” that stores
grouped transactions into timestamped blocks (Van Garderen, 2016a). The
main
archiving strength of the blockchain is that hash values generated will
be
preserved on the blockchain for as long as the blockchain continues to
operate.

The
blockchain is a type
of distributed PKI. There are major differences between the purpose and
application of signatures in a conventional, centralized, PKI and the
purpose
and application of signatures in the blockchain. In a conventional PKI,
the
hash value is used for the authentication of the digital certificate.
In the
blockchain, the hash value authenticates both transaction data and
block data.
Additionally, hash values in the blockchain can be stored privately and
separately from the application that generated the hash value (Pedro,
2015, p.
99).

Proof-of-work

Proof-of-work
is the algorithm that ensures the security and transparency of the
Bitcoin
blockchain. It runs on SHA-256 hash functions. Full nodes, known as
miners,
authenticate 10 minutes’ worth of Bitcoin blockchain
transactions into a block
by solving a mathematical puzzle that generates a hash value for that
block. In
doing so, the miner has successfully “mined” the
block and proved to the
network that he has exerted the work required to hash the block. In
return, the
network rewards the miner with a fixed quantity of bitcoins.Hashing is a key feature
of proof-of-work
(Pedro, 2015, p. 96).

Proof-of-work
operates on the same principle as a CAPTCHA where the prospective user
must
pass a test in order to access a service (Pedro, 2015, p. 102).
Proof-of-work
utilises the blockchain’s computational power against
attempts to tamper with
the blocks (ibid., p. 95). Proof-of-work relates to the main principle
of
hashing. In our Alice and Bob transfer, the hashing is a proof-of-work
that the
document has been authenticated.

Proof-of-stake

This
Ethereum
blockchain is a decentralized super-computer that runs smart contracts
and
other decentralized apps (Ethereum Project, 2017). Proof-of-stake is
the
principal property of Ethereum. Participants in this blockchain
purchase tokens
that enable them to transact in auctions, prediction markets and in
events that
require decision making, such as the future of the network. They do
this by
proving that their balance is sufficient to participate. The users
prove their
commitment to a transaction by “minting” (i.e.,
publishing), blocks in
proportion to the quantity of tokens they hold, as opposed to mining
them. This
is more environmentally friendly than the proof-of-work function,
because it does
not require nearly as much computational power as mining. Other
advantages of
proof-of-stake are that the activity is open to all stakeholders on the
network
and, because of the lower computational power required, the transaction
fees
are lower (Pedro, 2015, p. 235).

There
is disagreement, however, about the risk of centralization. Pedro
(2015) argued
that as there is wider participation among the users, proof-of-stake is
less
susceptible to centralization. Bentov et al. (2014, p. 34) countered
that
proof-of-stake would place amateur minters in a conflict of interest
against
professionalized miners. Bentov (2014) expected the miners to prevail
and then
make centralizing moves to consolidate their control over the network.

Proof-of-concept

In
the context of the blockchain, proof-of-concept is the creation of a
digital
sandbox within which the entrepreneur can build a solution, gather
supporting
datasets, then hash the sets and broadcast them to the blockchain
(Troy, 2016).
This system does not impact on the owners of the datasets, even though
the
datasets themselves may be real.

In the context
of
digital preservation, cryptographic hash functions are used to produce
proof of
a digital action that is unique, meaning that there is no identical
hash (Van
Garderen, 2016b). The identifier for the hash value of a
proof-of-concept will
be unique.

Specialized signatures

The
blockchain community has conceived an array of signatures that utilise
the
hashing process in a way that can solve various issues, mainly
concerning
space. Two of these are of particular relevance in records management:

·Elliptic
Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA)
–
ECDSA combines elliptic curves (a public key family) with the DSA
digital
signature, which together form the signature scheme used in Bitcoin
(Pedro,
2015, p. 70). The feature that would be of interest to an archivist
looking for
an efficient preservation strategy is that there is no need to store
the public
key, as it can be hashed repeatedly in the future (Lemieux, 2016).

·Schnorr
signatures
- this is an overriding signature that hashes a
cluster of signatures that remedy file storage issues. For example, if
a fonds contains thirty documents
each
with their own signature, the archivist can sign the entire fonds with a Schnorr signature. He would
reduce the file size from 2400 bytes (80 bytes per signature) back to
80 bytes.
The cryptography community approves of Schnorr signatures because of
their
speed, simplicity and strong security (van Wirdum, 2016, para. 14;
Allen, 2015,
para. 3). Some in the Bitcoin community have called for them to become
the
standard (Pedro, 2015, p. 58). For the archivist, these signatures
provide a
simple means of preserving new fonds
that contain a large number of documents.

Timestamping

A
timestamp proves that a certain dataset existed at a certain point in
time
(Pedro, 2015, p. 99). The blockchain method creates timestamped blocks
through
peer-to-peer technology, therefore disintermediating Time Stamping
Authorities
(TSAs). Miners on the Bitcoin blockchain timestamp each block which
contains
ten minutes’ worth of transactions. The miners are,
effectively, operating as a
distributed TSA. This means that there is no need for periodic
re-timestamping
of signatures due to expiring keys. In promotional materials for its
new BLT
cryptographic algorithm, the software security company Guardtime stated
the
time and integrity of the signature can be proven mathematically,
without
reliance on the security of keys or of trusted parties (Guardtime,
2016).Amanti (2016)
stated that the time it takes for a TSA to
verify a transfer is measured in seconds, whereas the
blockchain’s verification
takes minutes (para. 23). He also noted two other advantages of
blockchain
timestamping over TSA timestamping:

·Long-term preservation can be
achieved without the maintenance costs that come with a TSA-issued
certificate
(Amati, 2016, para. 24).

·Archivists can exploit the
convenience of verifying the signature with the document and public key
without
having to safeguard the digital signature on a central server (Amati,
2016,
para. 25).

The chief
provision of ISO 18492:2005 is to guide information professionals on
the
long-term preservation and retrieval of authentic information on
document-based
systems. The standard articulates the dilemma faced by digital records
managers
as they consider the option to use blockchain technology alongside
their
existing systems. It indirectly offers strategies for a blockchain
system to
preserve and retrieve metadata about documents, such as the signatures.

An important
innovation that the blockchain offers that meets the standard is the
creation
of hash values, independently of file format. I will discuss this
further in my
analysis of ISO 15489-1 and of file formats.

ISO 14721:2012 (OAIS – Open Archival
Information Systems)

This standard
defines the OAIS model as a system that preserves archival information
on a
publicly-accessible channel. I would like to focus on one element of
the model:
the authentication process for the Content Data Objects. Records
managers place
importance on protecting the authenticity of their records for the
longer term
(Lemieux, 2016, p. 5, 10). The recommended authentication process as
stated in
ISO 14721:2012 acknowledges this by requiring the authentication of the
document to be repeatable (OCLC/RLG Working Group, 2002, p. 44).

There are four
types of Preservation Description information in the OAIS model (figure
3).
Blockchain metadata can be applied to this information in the following
ways:

1)Provenance
– any adjustment in the bitstream
of a document requires a new hash value for the document to continue to
reconcile with the corresponding identifiers in the blockchain. A
library can
utilize this property of the blockchain to maintain a record of the
digital
transitions of that document.

2)Context
– Because the blockchain is not
concerned with the circumstances behind a document’s
creation, it is not
applicable to this type of information.

3)Reference
– The hash value identifies the bitstream
of a document at a certain point in time.

ISO 15489-1:2016 – Management and
control of
records with their metadata

This standard
sets out rules for the long-term management and control of records and
their
metadata, regardless of their structure or format. Referring to the
previous
2001 standard, Lemieux (2016) described the standard as recommending
the
retention of the history of a record so that future users can judge its
reliability (Lemieux, 2016, p. 4) and its authenticity (ibid., p. 5).

When a
transaction is made on the blockchain, the document is separated from
its hash
metadata, i.e. keys and signatures. The document remains on the
archive’s
database but the hash metadata migrates to the blockchain database.
This
blockchain metadata is accessible on https://blockchain.info. Any visitor
can
view the hash value of a block and all the transactions that took place
therein. Click
here for an example. When they view
downloaded blocks (for
those who download the blockchain), they will see that there is no
blockchain
file format either for the blocks, the keys or the signatures.

This element of
the blockchain database makes it easier to comply with ISO 15489 by
using
metadata formats, such as ‘dat’, which are not
reliant on any document type.
However, Van Garderen has stated that the blockchain community is
incorrect in
believing that placing records on the blockchain solves the issues
stated in
section 5.2.2 of the standard, surrounding authenticity, reliability,
integrity
and usability of records. At his presentation at Simon Fraser
University in May
2016, he stated that he would not be confident selling the blockchain
as a
universal panacea for all records management problems (Van Garderen,
2016b).

RFC 3161 / ANSI X9.95 – timestamping

Existing
standards, such as RFC 3161 and ANSI X9.95, require trusted third
parties, or
digital notaries (Pedro, 2015, p. 100), to administer timestamps. These
parties
are known as Time Stamping Authorities (TSAs). RFC 3161 sets out the
respective
formats for which TSAs receive requests for a timestamp and the
TSAs’ response
(RFC 3161).

ANSI X9.95 also
deals with time stamping of documents, but with an emphasis on the
security of
financial transactions (ANSI, 2012).

RFC 3161
defines
a timestamping service as a proof mechanism “that a datum
existed before a
particular time”. The point behind this mechanism is to
enable the archivist to
verify that any digital signatures, coming under the
archivist’s jurisdiction
in a fonds, had been created within
the validity date of the public key certificate (RFC 3161, 2001).

Amati (2016)
recognised
that their long-term preservation requires management in order to
maintain the
certified timestamp’s validity: this management would involve
renovation of the
signatures, timestamp chaining and certificates (para. 22).

Comparisons between the
blockchain and PKIs

I
have discussed how PKIs combine digital certificate administration with
key
management. The preservation of digital signatures on the blockchain
network
has a different architecture and a different purpose. It has been
argued (e.g.,
Lemieux, 2016) that the blockchain is gradually becoming recognized as
a viable
solution for the professional need for trusted digital records and
public
registration systems in general.

Certification
–
The Bitcoin blockchain is a PKI that neither issues digital
certificates nor
operates through a CA. Blockchain technology does not require a digital
certificate for its users to trust the integrity of the network because
the
blockchain miners have already verified the transfer of digital value.

Decentralization
–
returning to the point about PKIs and the potentially serious issue of
the
‘single point of failure’, the server room or the
cloud can be seen as the
‘single point of failure’ that Kohnfelder was
alluding to. The main advantage
that a digital signature database on the blockchain network has over
databases
on centralized systems is the act of distributing a blockchain-based
PKI
infrastructure across a range of computers, or nodes. This
decentralized
structure enhances the longevity of the network because duplicates of
the
blocks, on which the signatures are stored, are so numerous (Findlay,
2015,
para. 22). The decentralization of the blockchain gives it a further
advantage
in that no third party can alter or erase the transactions stored in
the blocks
without undoing the proof-of-work requirement that had verified them
(Findlay,
2015, para. 13).

Distributed
consensus
–
thousands of computers located around the world, known as
‘nodes’, verify each
transaction by authenticating the digital signatures en
masse: they reach consensus about the integrity of each
transaction. This process is an element of the decentralized nature of
the
blockchain and some have argued that it gives the blockchain more
integrity
than authentication by a single CA (Lea, 2016). Amati (2016) stated
three
complementary positives of the blockchain’s consensus on
signatures:

·All
agree on the latest signatures.

·We
are seeing the same signatures.

·No-one
can alter the signatures
(para. 30).

Instead
of relying on a central
authority to certify a document’s authenticity, the
blockchain can assert proof
of its authenticity through cryptographic confirmation. This dynamic
can
empower many archive managers to establish their own records systems
backed by
the assurance and longevity of the distributed blockchain network
(Findlay,
2015, para. 14).

Notarization
– a
notary is a trusted authority that verifies or authenticates a
transaction and
the users in the network place trust in that notary that it will store,
securely, the data in question (Economist, 2015, para. 7). A CA is a
type of
notary for key pairs. In the blockchain, a distributed consensus on the
blockchain can take on notarial operations from trusted authorities
(Li, 2016,
para. 11).

Privacy
– the
encryption inthe
blockchain’s distributed network offers strong security
and privacy when verifying signatures. The way privacy differs on the
blockchain from that of a PKI is that despite the public nature of the
transactions and value balances, the counterparties behind the
transactions
remain private (Pedro, ch.13, p. 209). The blockchain record will say
that
Bitcoin address x sent a specified
amount of digital value to Bitcoin address y.
However, the more frequently they use the same Bitcoin addresses for
future
transactions, the further their privacy erodes. For example, an agent
will be
able to establish relationships between Bitcoin addresses. So, the
question of
privacy on the blockchain depends on the diligence of the
counterparties to
create new addresses per transaction. Pedro’s chapter 13 (pp.
209-229) offers a
full discussion about the privacy issue.

Independent
of file format
– a
digital archive should ensure that its authentication system is file
format
neutral. This reduces the problem of relying on applications that
transfer
data, proprietary or open-source, becoming obsolete (Findlay, 2005,
para. 13).

Conclusion

This
paper
has assessed public key infrastructures and surveyed the features of
the
Bitcoin blockchain. The answer to the question as to whether a
blockchain-powered PKI offers better signature preservation strategies
than
CA-controlled PKIs depends on what metadata the information
professional
selects for archival storage and the duration of the
retention/disposition
schedule. Boudrez (2007) stated that records of the validation metadata
can
replace that of the digital signature for those digitally-signed
records which
have a permanent retention period (p. 190). Therefore, blockchain
adoption may
be more advantageous to records with a permanent retention schedule.
This is
because the hash value, a feature of the blockchain, stands as
validation
metadata that would not require specific software for its future
verification.
Furthermore, the blockchain record does not require a centralized
party, such
as a CA, to notarize or validate the hashes – unless the
records management
utilises sidechains and third-party notaries such as Factum.

Developments
in the Ethereum blockchain offer a point of entry for the information
professions at a lower cost than the Bitcoin blockchain. The
proof-of-stake
versus proof-of-work conflict will have a different outcome for
decentralized
networks. In the case of a large blockchain network such as Bitcoin,
where
hashing power for block creation requires the corporatization of
miners,
Bentov’s scenario of proof-of-work dominating the network is
most likely to
play out. However, in emerging, decentralized blockchains such as
Ethereum, where
mining is still accessible to the user community, Pedro’s
optimism for the
benefits of proof-of-stake can hold.

Blockchain
technology is in a transitional phase. This July (2016) alone has seen
the halving
in the Bitcoin blockchain and the hard fork on that of Ethereum. The
blockchain
community has yet to see the ramifications of these developments play
out. The
blockchain offers exciting options for the library, archival and
records
management communities, but information professionals would be wise to
wait
before adopting these technologies.

Stephen Thompson is a graduate student at the
School
of Library, Archival and Information Studies on the MLIS program. His
research
interests are technology, information security and scholarly
communication. He
is currently collaborating with Vicki Lemieux to launch a new
blockchain
knowledge platform, Blockchainubc.ca, that will investigate the
applicability
of blockchain technology to processes in records management,
librarianship and
archiving.

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